What does 'UX/UI' even mean?

I have to admit, I’ve been pretty annoyed over the last few years about the rise of this term.

As a designer and creator for almost twenty years, it’s difficult to see something that you feel passionate about merged in with other skills and professions. For a long time, I’d seen myself as a UX Designer, championing the users’ experience within an interface, and working to connect that with the needs and objectives of the business they’re interacting with.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen - let’s be honest, mostly from people that don’t work in either skillset - the terms User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) combined into that one homologation, UX/UI.

Those UX designers who passionately felt that their techniques were special, whose tools were unique to them, felt the pain crush them every time the term was thrown about. Arguing against it on LinkedIn became a regular occurrence.

What actually makes them different?

It’s true to say that pureblooded UX is a rather different beast to UI. Most of the UX practitioners I’ve worked with across my career have, for example, a basic grasp of visual design tools like Figma but that isn’t where they’re best placed. Actually, their preferred battlefield is on the whiteboard, in documentation, or in front of a customer.

Gathering information. Organising insights. Communicating ideas, gaining trust, and unifying support.

UX is a far more person-centric responsibility than we give it credit for. And that is difficult. Because humans are complicated, spongey bags of chemicals and electrical impulses that rarely behave in a constantly predictable manner.

Humans are not like systems. They aren’t pixel-perfect, nor do their behaviours replicate expectations exactly like a pattern library or style guide.

Good UI designers thrive on order, beauty, and detail. They take well-articulated problems, boundaries and scope, and create solutions from them that are consistent, and bound in good reflections of a person’s expectation.

Good UX designers are incredible communicators. Between team members. Of ideas from observations or customer signals. They know the right way to articulate something, even if it’s never been done before.

It’s like equating a chef with a waiting staff, or a roofer with a bricklayer. Neither are less important than the other - without them, you wouldn’t have a restaurant or a house - and their skills might be interchangeable or overlapping at times. You might even find some people that can do both. But their focus is nonetheless distinct and defined, and for good reason:

Things get done well when good teams, with individuals of focused and well-defined responsibility, work together.

Unintended ignorance

The issue, of course, is that people don’t see all the work that happens behind the scenes, particularly on the UX side of the equation.

Design isn’t just what you see, which is the mistake many people make; it’s the result of the decisions that have been made to produce what you see. An effective UI is the expression of good design. One that is the result of the work poured in from user research, coordination and communication, from taking responsibility and making good, informed and risk-mitigating decisions.

And then makes all of that invisible behind the interface.

Is it any wonder that people continue to conflate the two terms? The experience is, after all, what they experience - which is the interface, the surface upon which they interact with your product.

UX/UI isn’t going anywhere.

So what can we do about ‘UX/UI’?

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Updating the understanding of the industry at large is going to take a while. Individually, though, we can educate people as to the difference between the terms and what they really mean when we hear about them. As practitioners of these skills, we can bring people along with us on the journey, show them exactly where our proficiency starts and stops, and articulate the benefits it provides.

Honestly, though, I don’t think it matters any more. Skills across the spectrum of design - whether it’s architectural or user experience or interface or graphics or marketing - are broad, nuanced and specific to the individual, not to the role.

We’re all designers. We all have different skills. We should be applying them effectively regardless of our roles and understanding our limitations so we can apply the expertise of others where we need it, too.

It’s time to get off the soapbox and remind ourselves why we were on it in the first place - our passion for what we do and helping others to demonstrate their passions, too.